Second Chances

After a lovely graduation at my alma mater and an awesome commencement speech from one of my favorite high school teachers, I had every intention of welcoming friends into the high-school-graduate club, taking a few pictures, and heading home to enjoy the beautiful and warm evening. I planned to write a blog post and add some supporters to my e-mail update list for while I am overseas before going to bed.

 I was feeling like quite the independent woman, to say the least. (Cue the “independent black woman who don’t need no man!”) Walking back to my car after the ceremony tonight, in my heels with my fancy purse, I relished (maybe a bit too forwardly) that I was a twenty year college student with my life before me and trip to Asia on the horizon. I even got the random urge to roll down my windows and turn up the radio and sing Abandon’s “New Years Day” much too loudly on the thirty minute drive home. It was fantastic.

Then I glanced down and realized I had missed a call from my mom. I called her back and we played a short round of phone tag. She called me back again and asked me if I had left graduation yet and where I was.

Pause with me for a moment. Here I am. Independent. Driving my own car. I have been at college on and off for two years, during which time I do not call my mom every time I leave or arrive somewhere, like I once did during my first years as a licensed driver. My mom was even at graduation, though she was required to sit with the other teachers while I sat with a friend, and she told me she was leaving as soon as the ceremony was over, but that I could stay as long as I wanted. So why did she call me? It felt like overkill.

Believe me, I absolutely love my mom. But there was something that irked me about her phone call. Sometimes I feel like I am at this strange and confusing crossroads between child and adult. Legally, I can order things online, drive unrestricted, live by myself, and a host of other things. One more year and I’ll be legal in more ways as well.

Yet at the very same time, I am so incredibly dependent. Just hours earlier, my mom bought my dinner at Moe’s and was reminding me that I have to rely on someone to come pick me up from the airport when I fly back to the US from Asia.

And when it comes to God, I need him to. Sometimes I hate admitting that.

I came home from college excited about this trip to Asia. I came home tired, so tired, but ready to learn and grow (and read and knit and run) this summer. And I was doing well, too. I had a system for getting up at a decent time, eating a healthy breakfast and doing a devotional time, then heading to the YMCA for a good workout and practicing for a 5K.

In time, I began slipping out of the schedule. I got prideful. I stayed up too late and woke up too late. I didn’t do my devotions; I stopped seeing God in the little things. I slipped up. Earlier today, I got upset for no reason. I lost my phone and blamed it on everyone but myself. I became disappointed in myself for a side cramp and a leg-spasm-thing that kept me from running today. I yelled at my brother.

When I don’t go to God for the daily (spiritual) bread I need each day, I sometimes wonder how I make it through the day. It’s awful. There is this God who is sovereign over everything and who loves me and I continue to ignore him and his pursuit of me because reading the Bible is “boring” or I’m “tired” or there’s “so much” to do. How stupid is that?

Tonight, driving with the windows down and “New Years Day” loud, I thought about second chances. Today did not go exactly as planned, although it ended well. When I mess up, whether I’m struggling with a bad habit sin or a major struggle sin, whether I’m just not seeing God or actively rebelling against God, it should bring me to (good) guilt - the kind that leads to repentance.

Repentance is not an “I’m sorry” and move on. It’s a changing “I’m sorry.” Repentance means that I hate the sin and I am so grateful that God would love me through and in spite of it. In reality, God does not see my sinful self, but rather the holy Jesus covering over me. And while God sees Jesus covering me, I am being redeemed and made holy. I am in the process of sanctification. I am being saved.

Am I there yet? Definitely not. But I must believe that God is working. God is moving. I am being sanctified. I am being made to look more like him.

And I must have patience with myself along the way. God is a God of second chances and it’s okay to need him desperately, because I do. A lot.

What I'm Listening To...

"New Year's Day" - Abandon

"You Are" - Tenth Avenue North

"You Are My King (Amazing Love)" - Newsboys

Check out my 30 Before 30 Blog: doing thirty things in the next ten years. Want to get e-mail updates  while I'm in Asia for five weeks? Use the form in the post below. Comment with your thoughts on repentance!

Thunderstorms and Change in the Air

It rained so many times today. The skies were absolutely dark in the direction ahead of me and I was driving  to a nearby town to pick up my brother. I called him and asked him if it was raining where he was. He assured me it was not and I hung up. A few moments later, it started pouring where I was driving.
It rained again when I missed my turn and took the back way to get my brother, this time a more gentle rain. My windshield looked like it was covered in tiny jewels.
Then it rained once I got into town and began helping for my mom's program. We moved everything for the reception upstairs into the cafeteria just in time before a huge storm hit. The lights flickered and the windows shook and we could barely see out of the windows.

My roommate-last-year loves the rain because to her, it is God telling her he's got everything under control and he knows what he's doing. I am not sure if I am remembering right, but I am pretty sure it rained at her grandfather's funeral, and that is why it means so much to her. It was like God was saying, "Hey, I've got this..." Recently, butterflies have been telling me the same thing. Rain often still gets to me in a beautiful way, but God has been using butterflies, too. For example, over the weekend I was nervous about a friend's spiritual life. I was putting my insurance information back into my glove compartment, half of my body in my car and half out, when I glanced out the windshield. Right as I looked up, a gorgeous blue butterfly flitted by. And God said, "Hey, I've got this..." 

I know it sounds a bit sacrilegious to an American Christian to rely on "signs and visions," although the Bible tells us that in the end days, people will prophesy and see visions and dreams (Acts 2:17). However, I know that God is a patient lover who is pursuing his bride, the church, both corporately and individually. And I know that one of the ways God pursues us is with things that have meaning to us, like the right song at the right time. Or a kind word right when we need it. Or a butterfly.

Believe me, God is here. And active. And he is working. We just have to listen.

From Flickr - US National Archives

P.S. I'm going to China in five weeks and two days! I will not be posting on this blog while I'm gone and I may or may not be available on Facebook. If you would like to receive e-mail updates from me (about one per week) while I'm out of the country for five weeks, please fill out the form below. Thanks!

Growing and Serving in This Season

[This is part three of a three part series.]


“You should never get married until you are first happy being single,” she said. At the time I took her word for it, although I really didn’t believe her. Less than ten years later, she did get married and is happily married to this day.


After going through the program herself, my mom led a few sessions of the DivorceCare program at our old church. One of the topics the curriculum discussed was remarriage after the divorce was final. The program encouraged the newly single people to remain single for a long time. Remarriage too quickly was usually a sign of either infidelity during the marriage or a marriage out of loneliness instead of love and commitment.


As a single person, my mom’s words still hold true for me. I think you shouldn’t enter a dating relationship until you are happy being single. Cloud and Townsend write, “If you must be dating or married in order to be happy, you are dependent, and you will never be happy with whatever person you find.” They suggest “curing” the aloneness first, then dating. Never use dating to try to cure the feeling of loneliness. Their steps for the cure include strengthening your relationship with God, strengthening your relationships with other Christians (a “safe and healthy” group of people known as your “support system”), having a “full life,” and working to repair brokenness in your spiritual and emotional life.


In this blog post, I want to focus on the idea of a “full life,” which Cloud and Townsend describe as including “spiritual growth, personal growth, vocational growth, altruistic service, hobbies, intellectual growth, and the like.” In part one of this series of singleness, I mentioned the importance of college, career, and ministry as places to put your time and focus while you are single. At this stage in my life, for example, I can be anything. I have so many opportunities, so many chances to take risks and explore and try out new things that I really wouldn’t have if I was married and settling down. College, especially, is like that. Here’s a time when you are almost on your own, where you can do so much. Think of this time in your life as an open horizon or blank page. It’s why I made my 30 before 30 list. It’s why I’m going to China this summer. It’s why I can stay up late writing blog posts (or get up early, in this case)!


Hint, hint: Living a “full life” makes you a more interesting person. It gives you things to do, so you’re not always on Facebook. It makes life worthwhile. It gives you opportunities to learn experientially and to practice what you’ve been learning. And think about it: Aren’t the people who do something with their lives a bit more attractive than those who sit around and eat potato chips?


Now, for some people, stress is something they hide behind. The more they are encouraged to do, the more they will take on, eventually overloading and harming themselves. Do not be that kind of person, but allow yourself to take risks and to try new things.


So, what are you doing with your life? A friend once asked, “If you could do anything and knew you could not fail, what would you do? And why aren’t you doing it?” I have always wanted to co-lead a small group at my college called a Barnabas Group. I will be able to apply to lead such a group towards the end of next semester and I’m really looking forward to it, although I am nervous about the application process and the actual leadership of a group of freshman. Likewise, I’m nervous about China this summer. Things have and are falling into place, so I know God’s got this, but it is still intimidating to go for something so challenging.


Yet, look at the other side, friends. After this summer (spending five weeks in Asia), and my junior year (hopefully co-leading a group of freshmen girls), what kind of person will emerge? A stronger, deeper, healthier, and more Christ-like person, that’s my prayer. I made a list a couple months ago of qualities I desired in my future husband, but also qualities that I would seek to reach as well. One such quality was the ability to attempt difficult things. Challenging things. Things like ministering overseas, but also things like becoming yourself.


I think too many of us are afraid of who really are, but like my psychology professor always says: “There must be a ‘me’ before there can be a ‘we’.”A Relevant Magazine article discusses the importance of singleness as it relates to your individuality: “Making the most of being single means being on your own. It’s just you and God. Being single is about discovering who you are, setting personal boundaries, knowing your likes and dislikes, your passions and the desires of your heart.”


Let me close with something God gave me over a year ago. My first semester of college, God told me he wanted to do great and wonderful things in me and through me before there was a guy in my life. I believe he gave me three ministry and life opportunities at that point in which to serve him through my singleness.


Recently I realized I do not have any of those three things in my life anymore. At first, I became upset and I wondered (completely selfishly) if God had somehow forgotten about me. Then I realized that either this meant God was moving me out of a stage of singleness or he was giving me new opportunities to serve him in my current season. Right now I’m going with the latter, and I’m finding hope in the fact that God doesn’t give us the next three or four steps for our lives at once. Usually, God opens one door at a time and sheds light on one stone in the pathway at once. This time, he’s giving me a trip to Asia this summer that I doubt I would take if I was in a serious relationship, among other things.


I’m also left wondering if I put a little too much emphasis on the “through me” part of God’s promise and forgot about the “in me” part. If I am not changed on the inside, molded to be more like him through the on-going process of sanctification, my outside actions are not going to look like him either. I also believe that your service, ministry, and vocation should come from what is inside you, meaning that what God wants to do in you is just as important as what he wants to do through you. Howard Thurman said, “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”


If I’ve learned one thing recently, it’s that it is perfectly okay to need some time. It’s okay to ask God for help. It’s okay to need to spend some time working on your own heart. Let God begin to heal and restore you and stop fighting him. Ministering to others does not mean that you have to put God’s work in you on hold. Be moldable through your ministry.


Do something. Anything. Something challenging and maybe a bit risky. Something to benefit someone else. Love it and enjoy it. And grow closer and deeper in love with our amazing God. If it’s in his plans that you get married, you will, but better to do so while passionately in love with God, your friends, and your whole and full life, than desperate for someone to finally call your own.


Thanks for reading this three part blog series on singleness!
I have recently changed over to the new Blogger interface. Sorry about the huge line breaks - any help on how to change them would be appreciated. 

The One Thing Not On The List

A friend and I were speaking recently about our dreams and goals for the future. I am definitely a goal-setter and I've become more of a "goal-reacher" since I've gone to college. Anyway, I told this friend about the list I'm making of all the things I want to do in the next 10 and 1/2 years. Eventually, I want to complete thirty goals before I turn thirty. So, my friend immediately told me the goal that would be number one on her list: Getting married.

Ironically, that was the one thing I decided not to put on my list.

I've wrestled with the idea of marriage for a long time. I guess since I was 13, when I wrote the first letter to my future husband. That was also the year my mom gave me a purity ring and I made the decision to save my first kiss for my fiance. Since then, dating and marriage have been familiar, yet strangely foreign, topics to me. Like knowing how to cook, but never having cooked yourself. You might know the steps to making scrambled eggs, but it takes experience to get it right.

Of the little experience I have with guys, I feel like it's all been a big mess. I know that I have grown a lot because of the icky and awkward situations I have dealt with and I know that they have prepared me for what is to come. But that doesn't change the fact that they were still icky and awkward and often painful situations. Yet after all of that awkwardness, I've still had comparatively little experience. I have yet to enter a dating relationship. It's a little disheartening.

I'm torn between two thoughts: I'm nineteen and I still have the rest of my life to find a great guy, get married, have kids, and settle down and I'm a college sophomore, the chances of meeting a guy after college are small and I want to get married so I can have kids before I'm thirty.

But the honest-to-goodness fact is that I can't control my love life. I can't make anyone like me. I can't manufacture an awesome guy and waltz him right on into my life at the perfect time. It doesn't work like that. Relationships are one of those things with which we must trust God. That does not mean I'm called to be an indifferent, uncaring, boring, turtleneck-wearing, nun... you get the picture. So, yeah, my list of 30 things to do before I'm 30 currently does not include anything that would require a man by my side. I'm not finished writing it yet, so that may change later. Right now it simply includes things I want to do for me and others before I reach the big "3-oh." I have time. I have a little less than 11 years.

Does this mean that if, within the next 11 years, God brings my future husband into my life, I can't marry him? Of course not. It simply means that I'm not going to put a time limit on God's schedule for my life. I'm not going to tell God that he has to work within these parameters and this calendar. I'm going to let God have his way with me. And if his way is that I live in a shack in the middle of India when I'm thirty, where I can't own a piano, open a long-term savings account, or any of the other things on my list (excluding visit more countries or go on another mission trip), then so be it. Because his plans are going to be so much better than mine.

On the other hand, just because I'm letting God take control, that doesn't mean I don't care. I was visiting a church for a service for college-aged young adults. The topic for the night was marriage and someone asked, "I'm 18. Why do I need to talk about marriage now?" The pastor answered, "Because if you wait until you're twenty-five, it will be too late." God's got a plan and I'm going to pray hard and prepare diligently (and let myself be prepared) so I'll be ready for what he has for me and even for what Satan throws me at me.

This means that whether I start dating in two months or in two years, or whether I get married in five years or in fifteen years, God is still in control. And that's why I'm not putting it on my list. Because God is still in control. And with something as big as marriage, I don't want to jeopardize God's plan with my desire to beat a timeline.